Garry Disher is a famous Australian novelist, who has written a number of novels based on the Mystery & Thriller and non-fiction genres as well as a few children’s books. He is particularly famous for writing down the successful novel series, the Inspector Challis series. Garry’s description of the main protagonist of the series, Inspector Challis was very much appreciated by the readers and the critics alike. This motivated him to continue writing a number of novels in his writing career. Garry was born in the year 1949 in Burra, Australia and was brought up on his family farm in South Australia. He completed his education from the Melbourne and Adelaide Universities and obtained his postgraduate degrees. He was awarded with a fellowship in creative writing by the Stanford University in the year 1978. It was during his studying days in the same university when he wrote his first collection of short stories. In his career as an author, Garry has traveled to a lot of overseas places before returning back to Australia. At first he began teaching creative writing to the university students and eventually became a full time writer in the year 1988. The list of novels written by Garry includes around 40 titles based on general category and crime fiction genre, textbooks, children’s books and books related to the craft of writing. Garry’s unique style of writing novels helped him to become one of the best-known authors of Australia. He had decided to become a writer from his childhood after getting influenced by the bedtime stories of his father, the isolated farm life and his love for reading various categories of books. After completing his education, Garry traveled to a number of places in Europe, U.K and Africa in relation to his work.

After returning to Australia from various trips abroad, Garry decided to write a Master thesis based on the history of Australia, at the Monash University situated in Victoria. In the meantime, he used to write several short stories for some literary magazines and competitions. After writing a few exciting short stories, Garry was successful in obtaining the fellowship in creative writing from the Stanford University. Before becoming a full time author, Garry Disher used to teach creative writing for a few years in Melbourne, in order to earn some extra income. At this time, he had already published a couple novels, several history textbooks, a writer’s handbook and two short story collections. Apart from writing fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, Garry has also written a few anthologies and has also worked as an editor for some of them. The crime novels written by Garry have earned widespread reputation and international acclaim. The novels written by him have also been published in different editions in England, Denmark, USA, Spain, Holland, Hungary, Germany, and Italy. Garry has toured Germany for a couple of times on author tours and has been awarded with a major crime fiction award on both the occasions. He has appeared on the bestseller lists for a number of times and has also been the guest of the Cologne and Munich writers’ festivals. Following the rave reviews for one of his novels, Garry toured the USA in the year 2009. During this tour, one of his novels was listed as the Best Book Of The Year by the Kirkus Review magazine. Recently, Garry Disher has been in a great demand for hosting workshops, talks and festival appearances. He has also been the writer-in-residence at the State library of Queensland, the Tasmanian Writers’ Union and the University of Northumbria in United Kingdom. Currently, Garry lives on the Mornington Peninsula in the southeast Melbourne along with his wife and a daughter.

One of the novel series written by Garry Disher is the Inspector Challis series, which is based on the life of the main protagonist of the series named Inspector Hal Challis, who works on the Peninsula in Southeast Melbourne, Australia, as a Detective Inspector. The series consists of a total of 6 books published between the years 1999 and 2011. The first novel of the series was titled ‘The Dragon Man’ and was published by the Soho Crime publishing house in the year 1999. The novel deals with the first investigation of the series by the main character, Detective Inspector Hal Challis. In the opening plot of the novel, a serial killer is depicted as roaming freely in the small coastal town situated on the outskirts of Melbourne and claiming the lives of the innocent people of the town. Inspector Hal Challis and his team are given the difficult job of catching the serial killer before he kills someone else. Other than the cases involving tough investigations, Inspector Challis is also required to deal with the editor of a local newspaper, who keeps a track of his investigations and reports them in his newspaper. Hal Challis also has to deal with his wife, who tries to save their marriage through long distance calls from a sanitarium, where has been admitted for the past 8 years in order to undergo rehabilitation for an attempted murder.

The second novel of the series was published in the year 2003 by the Soho Crime publishing house. The novel was titled ‘Kittyhawk Down’ and deals with the efforts of Homicide Squad Inspector Challis to solve the criminal cases in the city and serve justice. Inspector Challis reaches the Bushrangers bay at the seaside of Australia near Melbourne in order to investigate the cases of a 2 year old missing girl and an unidentified dead body of a drowning victim. The resort community of the area does not seem to be an ideal one to Challis as petty crimes such as stealing cars, burning letter boxes, etc., often takes place regularly. One of the best friends of Inspector Challis named Kitty Casement owns a photography service and runs a Kittyhawk. The two come closer to a mutual interest in the Dragon Rapide airplane from 1935. Soon, the beautiful beach resort becomes a plot of serial killings as well as one of Kitty’s airplanes suffers huge damage. Inspector Hal Challis is required to find out the link between the cases and catch the killer before more innocent people get killed.

Jack Reacher is back! Personally I thought this was the 2nd best Reacher book yet. The latest book in the Jack Reacher series, Past Tense, came out November 5th. Family secrets come back to haunt Reacher when he decides to visit the town his father was born in. Why? Because when he visits there he finds out no-one with the last name of Reacher has ever lived there. It leaves him wondering - did his father ever live there? More Details.

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Featured Series

One of my favourite series is the Brilliance Saga by Marcus Sakey and it is our featured series of the month. It's just an incredible light sci-fi series that fans of "Dark Matter" would also enjoy. It's free on Kindle Unlimited too! More Details.

Featured Author

Our author of the month is Canadian author Opal Carew who writes erotic romance novels. Opal has written over 100 novels with multiple book series such as the Dirty Talk series and the Abducted series. If you’re a fan of erotic romance, be sure to check out Opal Carew.

Did You Know…

Clive Cussler started working as a copywriter for an advertising industry after his discharge from the military. Later he became the creative director of two successful advertising agencies. He was assigned to produce radio and television commercials and was also given a reward at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for many of his commercials.